Scared of voicemail? It’s a generational thing.

They get performance anxiety, what with all that talking they have to do and no one really being there to answer them and not being able to involve their thumbs in any way.

Brianna is a millennial, so I was curious about how she feels. And, yes, she doesn’t like voicemail. I love voicemail for the same reason I like texting: I can get my message across without having to get into a long, drawn out conversation, like with my mother or some other sort of long storyteller. Speaking of my mother, she also doesn’t like to leave voicemail (she’s slightly older than boomers, many years beyond the millennials) … because she has to talk to me in person. She will call my cellphone three times in a row and never leave a message so that I, thinking she is having a heart attack, have to call her immediately. She won’t leave me a message with the real reason: She saw something scary on “Dr. Oz” and wants to make sure I — and my family — are not eating, drinking whatever it is.

I’m part of Generation X, but just barely. It starts with my birth year, 1966, so I might have some older person tendencies. Brianna is in the early part of the millennials, which start at 1980 (she was born in ’83), so perhaps she also has some Gen X tendencies. Let’s see. We’re going to give our opinions on a variety of communication tools to see where we fall.

Answering machine:

Tracy: I miss you, answering machine! This satisfied my not having to talk to anyone directly. I could save funny messages. I could ignore messages. The only drawback was the blinking number of messages that were waiting for you. Hated when it was blinking a “zero.”

Brianna: OMG, the saved messages! Yes! I did that with voicemail too. I kept them for months and months. Does anyone save messages anymore??

So my family were early voicemail adopters, which means I never really fully experienced the blinking-message thing, except for in college when for some reason they gave us all landlines and we hooked up answering machines in order to prank each other. Funny then; obnoxious now. But I love answering machines as a relic, an artifact. And, of course, you could only do this on an answering machine with any real satisfaction:

Voicemail:

Tracy: I’ve already told you, I’m a fan. Right to the point. No interruptions. I’m the only one talking.

Brianna: I hate to be a negative Nancy but … I DESPISE voicemail. I loathe it with my heart and my bones and my blood and my plasma. Nothing is more infuriating than coming back to my desk to see the red light on the phone telling me there’s a stupid message I’m going to have to punch in 30 numbers just to hear. And the absolute worst message is the “Hey call me” message. Hello, why in the F didn’t you send an email? A text!

I did find a solution to the scourge of voicemail on my cellphone, though. Thanks be to you, Google Voice, for bypassing my voicemailbox entirely and delivering a sound file and a transcription of the message to my email. You are a good, kind, considerate friend and I’d do anything in the world for you. I cannot wait for you to rise up and destroy voicemail as we know it today.

Texting:

Tracy: This is one better than leaving messages, because you don’t have to wait for someone to get the message and it doesn’t have to turn into a conversation, which could go on for hours (sorry, Mom).

Brianna: Yeah. I’m for it. I hate to play favorites with one device, but I especially love texting with another iPhone user because there’s that automatic messaging system built in for Apple users and texting is quicker and easier that way, plus I can see when you’re typing and even — sometimes, depending on your settings — when you’ve received my text. And! There’s that desktop text/messaging app so texting morphs into IMing kind of and that can be confusing if you’re wary of cross-platformin’, but give into it and you’ll discover a world of radical awesome. Mostly, I prefer instant messaging to almost any other method of communication so the more texting skews that way the happier I am.

Skype:

Tracy: I think we can agree that this requires a whole other level of house cleaning and makeup applying. And if my parents are involved, I will be talking to their noses. No thank you. Back up, please.

Brianna: OK, I have complicated feelings about Skype and video chat. Right, Tracy, you’re so right. The makeup! The hair! The lighting! The angles! The shoving all the clutter in your house out of view of the camera so you can act like you’re a Good Housekeeper. This always makes me think of Infinite Jest, that prescient passage about the challenges of video chat: your full attention is required in a way unlike when you’re chatting with someone on the phone or in person. You struggle to make eye contact. (Are you looking at the screen? Or the camera?) You can’t doodle or pick up all that clutter you’re hiding. Your full presence is crucial to this exchange and that is a terrifying thing.

But maybe I just need to relax and let the people who love me enough to video-chat me see my shoes and books and bills all over the place.

Phone talking:

Tracy: Who has time for this? However, if I’m in the car, this is the best way to communicate hands-free.

Brianna: Totally agree about the car. The car is pretty much the only place I want to talk on the phone anymore. Selfishly: to pass the time on my 20-minute commute home.

Great topic. It’s funny, just before I logged on I made a phone call and it went to voicemail. I stuttered and repeated my name like three times and I wish I could delete and do it over again. Like in an email. Can’t I just email everyone?

Also, I absolutely hate texts telling me to do something. Or a barrage of texts when I don’t answer. If you send someone a text and they don’t respond, THEY ARE EFFING BUSY!!!

“The car is pretty much the only place I want to talk on the phone anymore. Selfishly: to pass the time on my 20-minute commute home.” Heaven forbid you pay attention to anything as trivial as driving safely.

As a member of the millenials, I think all my fellow young-ish people need to get a life. Leave a freaking voicemail. It’s not hard. You shouldn’t have anxiety doing it. And if you have anxiety about leaving a voicemail, you really need to evaluate your life. Seriously. I leave at least 10 voicemails a day for work. Just say what you want and hang up.

I agree with this. I don’t understand why leaving a voicemail would be anxiety-inducing. Just state your business and hang up. You do have to know in advance what you want to say, but it’s hardly difficult or worthy of stress. If it’s something very important, like you’re calling about a job or something, write out a script to follow. I also agree that if someone calls, and doesn’t leave a message, I am not calling back.